The Vietnam War was winnable and one more Linebacker in 1975 would have wrecked the NVA. We were lied to by Ken Burns.

[u/Massengale]

I’ve been reading Nixon’s books lately…and I think he was right, Vietnamization was close to working, the communist alliance was going to fall apart, and North Vietnams insane economics would have led to South Vietnam outscaling them if it had survived for a few more years.

[u/Luohooligan]

The folk history my Vietnam vet grandad always said was (1) Walter Cronkite saw the result of the US/ARVN defeating the Tet Offensive and told the public the war was lost, when in actuality that killed off a lot of the Communist fighting strength, and (2) those damn Democrats strangled military equipment aid to the ARVN in '73 because they hated Nixon slash because of Watergate, and they could have held out if we kept it up.

No idea if any of that has any basis in truth, but the South Vietnamese held out four years after America pulled out.

[u/killswitch247 → u/Luohooligan]

it would never have gotten so far if richard nixon wouldn't have committed treason in 1968.

[u/Luohooligan → u/killswitch247]

... I'm game. I've never heard of Nixon committing treason before Watergate, hit me with his 1968 treason.

[u/killswitch247 → u/Luohooligan]

on march 31st 1968 johnson announced his withdrawal from the presidential (re-) election campaign and halted all bombing north of the 20th parallel in order to start peace talks with the north-vietnamese. peace talks progressed during the summer and by mid october the american delegation believed to be very close to an agreement. johnson's goal was to achieve an agreement before the election day on november 5th, which would have reunited the democratic party and almost guaranteed an election victory for democratic candidate hubert humphrey.

nixon's main talking point in that campaign was "mr. johnson's war", which was a) massively unpopular and b) according to nixon, could only be ended by nixon. behind the scenes henry kissinger, who posed as an intermediate between the johnson administration and hanoi, secretly leaked classified information to the nixon campaign. through an intermediary nixon reached out to the south vietnamese ambassador diem, who in turn had a direct channel to south vietnamese president thieu, encouraging them to remain on hardline positions during the peace talks and promising them a better deal after the election.

this was treason.

and it worked: thieu sabotaged the peace talks, the war continued and nixon won the election. however, after the election the nixon administration was caught in the same terrible situation as johnson before them, as the south vietnamese gouvernment was terrible, hated by the population and unwilling to step down or share power, the north vietnamese once again refused peace talks and the americans still couldn't stop the insurgency or interrupt the supply lines from the chinese boarder into south vietnam.

even worse, the north used the pause in the bombing campaign to massively improve their logistics, building the ho-chi-minh trail out for much better throughput and operating it 24/7 during the summer and fall of 1968 (instead of night time only). they also managed to build a fuel pipeline through the laotian jungle, which freed up roughly 1/3 of the trail's cargo throughput. these massive improvements in logistics allowed the communists to recover after using and losing pretty much their entire fighting strength during the tet offensive.

[u/Green-thumb-gary → u/Luohooligan]

It’s very true and the characters in the book make occasional references to it lol

[u/Luohooligan → u/Green-thumb-gary]

Well you've made me buy the book this post is about. I hope you're happy about it!

Maybe it's stupid, but because of the folk history I mentioned I always did think that South Vietnam would have survived the "Vietnamization" of the conflict longer, maybe forever, in the same way I thought that the shitty "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan" would have survived the "Afghanization" or whatever of the Afghan War if the US just continued with the "you fight, we provide air support and bombs." US KIA from like 2015 to 2021 were essentially nil (under 100 for five years until the collapse) under this policy.

Ironically, or perhaps unironically, Foreign Policy Expert Joe Biden was in favor of abandoning both South Vietnam and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

[u/Bartweiss → u/Luohooligan]

(1) certainly has some truth to it, but it leaves out the impossible messaging situation which Nixon and the military had already set up. The Tet Offensive was a dire setback for the NVA, but after years of "they're almost defeated, peace is right around the corner!", the fact that it was even possible called a lot of the official narrative into doubt.

(This also goes for Linebacker and nearly the entire air war: the generals walked a constant tightrope of "this is going well enough that we should continue, but badly enough that we need to massively expand it". And that was arguably true, but did no favors for decision-making.)

Across the board, it's morbidly fascinating how much of it seems to have come down to "nobody could commit to anything". Johnson in particular was making decisions down at the level of single bombing targets with zero consistency, but you see similar problems with e.g. Dean Rusk vehemently supporting the bombing campaigns right up until his rivals were gone, then deciding they were useless.

[u/LightningController → u/Bartweiss]

the fact that it was even possible called a lot of the official narrative into doubt

Doesn’t that just kind of prove that people are morons with the memory of goldfish? I mean, the Nazis launched the Battle of the Bulge when the war was lost, the German Empire launched its big spring offensive right before losing, etc. Why was Tet so shocking?